Ideas, discoveries & the people behind them
Science & Innovation
Explore scientists, mathematicians, inventors and computing pioneers through detailed biographies, discoveries, collaborations and documented career milestones.
Discoveries develop through evidence, collaboration and debate. Each biography distinguishes an individual’s contribution from the work of colleagues and the history of the field.
Chemistry & Molecular Structure
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Computing & Digital Systems
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Ada Lovelace
Mathematician and early computing writer, 1815–1852
Dennis Ritchie
Computer scientist; creator of C and co-creator of Unix, 1941–2011
Grace Hopper
Computer scientist and US Navy rear admiral, 1906–1992
Tim Berners-Lee
Computer scientist and inventor of the World Wide Web
Engineering & Energy
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Life Sciences & Medicine
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Barbara McClintock
Cytogeneticist and Nobel laureate, 1902–1992
Charles Darwin
Naturalist and evolutionary theorist, 1809–1882
Dorothy Hodgkin
Chemist, crystallographer and Nobel laureate, 1910–1994
Rosalind Franklin
Chemist and X-ray crystallographer, 1920–1958
Tu Youyou
Pharmaceutical researcher and Nobel laureate
Mathematics & Spaceflight
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Physics & Astronomy
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C. V. Raman
Physicist and Nobel laureate, 1888–1970
Chien-Shiung Wu
Experimental nuclear physicist, 1912–1997
Galileo Galilei
Astronomer, mathematician and natural philosopher, 1564–1642
Isaac Newton
Mathematician and natural philosopher, 1643–1727
James Clerk Maxwell
Physicist and mathematician, 1831–1879
Nicolaus Copernicus
Astronomer and cathedral canon, 1473–1543
Richard Feynman
Theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate, 1918–1988
Scientific pioneers
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Alan Turing
Mathematician and computer-science pioneer
Albert Einstein
Theoretical physicist
Jane Goodall
Primatologist and conservationist
Marie Curie
Physicist and chemist
Stephen Hawking
Theoretical physicist and cosmologist